I cannot express enough my disgust to those who are so ready, in the absence of any proof whatsoever, to pin the blame on Captain Zaharie. I would like to express my deepest sympathy to his wife and children and his family too and to tell them to remain strong in these most trying times. The same goes for all the passengers and crew of flight MH370.

Casting aspersions on his character and making unfounded insinuations about Captain Zaharie's support for my political cause being a probable reason for the disappearance of flight MH370 is not only reckless and insensitive but in the absence of any proof, is highly defamatory. In relation to me, these insinuations and innuendoes are of course part of the routine character assassination campaign carried out against me by government and UMNO-controlled media.

Meantime, many questions have been raised regarding not just the competency of the authorities in the investigations but also the sheer lack of transparency. What is it that the authorities are hiding that is making them so paranoid about letting others help in the investigation? It should be noted too that the Opposition's attempt to move a motion in Parliament to discuss MH370 was flatly rejected.

Opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim has asked the media and the authorities not to "cast aspersions" on Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 pilot Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah without concluding investigations in the first place, insisting that the experienced pilot was a "good family man".

Anwar admitted in a press conference at the Parliament lobby today that Zaharie was related to Anwar's daughter-in-law and that he had personally met the pilot, who worked for MAS since 1981, at several PKR functions.

"He is someone who has passion for justice," Anwar said today.

He also ridiculed the idea floated around that the pilot could have hijacked the plane in protest at the Sodomy II conviction against Anwar on March 7.

"I think 90 percent of taxi drivers are our supporters. But I don't see all the taxis being hijacked to Kajang," he said.

Sumardi said Indonesia was already doing what it could to assist Malaysia to find the missing aircraft, with which radar communication was lost over the Gulf of Thailand at 1.30am on March 8.

“Aren’t we one of the 25 countries that have been helping them out up until now?” he is quoted by Merdeka.com as asking.

Sumardi stressed that the republic has no knowledge about the plane’s whereabouts and that the allegation by the Malaysian newspaper had to be explained.

The Merdeka.com headline, “Funny, Indonesia blamed for working with US to hide MH370″ was subsequently picked up by Yahoo Indonesia.

Utusan last Sunday quoted Cabal Times as claiming that Flight MH370 was hidden by the US at its base in Diego Garcia.

The report added that if this were true, Indonesian radar would have picked up the plane.

“But the question is, Indonesia is believed to be part of the ‘secret globalisation’ movement or Western alliance with certain agenda and would certainly remain silent about whatever they detected on their radar,” Utusan quoted Cabal Times as saying.

Cabal Times is a conspiracy portal, with the Eye of Providence that sits on a pyramid as its logo, which is often associated with Freemasonry and is similarly found on the US one dollar bill.

More bizzarely, a brown cow is superimposed on the symbol to complete the logo.

This, however, did not raise a red flag with the Umno-owned newspaper for citing the story.